Officials at General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee have pulled a request to Milwaukee County seeking about $1.5 million to expand one of the airport’s remote parking lots.
The expansion would have created 580 parking spaces over 4.3 acres at remote parking lot B. Mitchell had sought an appropriation through the county’s 2012 capital improvements budget. Financing would have been provided through general airport revenue bonds.
Mitchell has a total of 11,244 public parking spaces in its parking structure and several surface lots on the airport grounds.
A steady increase in passenger traffic at the airport had led to discussions about a need for additional parking, Mitchell spokeswoman Pat Rowe said.
“Spaces do fill,” Rowe said. “We’ve seen a lot of passenger growth.”
Through May, Mitchell recorded 21 consecutive months of record passenger traffic. However, the streak ended in June, when the passenger count at Mitchell dipped 4.9 percent to 877,694, compared with 922,984 for the same month last year.
“As a staff, we put our heads together and, at this moment with passenger traffic flattening, the return on investment isn’t there right now,” Rowe said. “Our staff recommended that the request be deferred. It’s purely a matter of economics.”
The remote surface lots “have been filling on a regular occurrence,” according to information the airport submitted with its budget allocation request. All parking spaces, including those in the structure and surface lots, have been completely filled during spring break and major holidays, Mitchell officials noted.
The project would have expanded remote lot B on airport-owned land immediately south of the existing surface lot. Remote lot B is located just west of the Amtrak station parking lot. Remote lots A and B currently contain 1,726 and 1,201 spaces, respectively.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele’s budget isn’t scheduled to go to the County Board until Sept. 29, said Jeff Bentoff, spokesman for Abele’s office.
“He’s been reviewing budget requests from various departments,” Bentoff said.
He declined to comment on the airport’s request.
Parking at the airport has become an issue in recent months.
Mitchell developed a proposal earlier this year to establish new fees for private parking and hotel parking operators near the airport.
One proposal would charge operators of shuttles that transport passengers to hotels and parking lots $2 per trip, in addition to a $500 annual fee already imposed. A separate proposal would charge off-site airport parking operators a “privilege fee” equal to 8 percent of their annual gross revenue. The fee would increase by one-half of 1 percent each calendar year until reaching 10 percent in 2015.
The changes are needed, in part, to alleviate curbside congestion at the airport, Mitchell officials claimed. They also argued that off-airport parking operators need to be assessed fees because they are benefiting from the use of airport facilities and business generated by the airport.
Abele, who was elected to office in April, later said he would kill the proposal after businesses in the area voiced their opposition to the fees.
No comments:
Post a Comment